Angèle Kingué

French & Francophone Studies

I've been fascinated by languages since I was a child growing up in Cameroon, West Africa.

Angèle Kingué developed a fascination with languages growing up in Cameroon. Located in West Africa, Cameroon is slightly bigger than Texas and has 98 languages. Kingué received her BA in French and English language and literature from the University of Yaoundé in Cameroon, and her master’s degree in applied linguistics from the University of North Wales in Bangor, where she studied language acquisition theory.

She says that all of her book learning didn't prepare her for the intricacies of idiom and everyday language. "I could say intelligent things about morphology and syntax," she says, "but I couldn't tell you what bacon or cornflakes were."

Teaching methodology is one of Kingué's passions. Not only is she concerned about contextualizing information — so that one can learn about culture and customs as well as vocabulary words — but she also stresses the importance of knowing about Francophone nations other than France, such as Niger, Tunisia, Rwanda, and even the Canadian province of Quebec. "There's a whole Francophone world people forget about," she says.

Being the director of the Bucknell en France program dominates much of Kingue's academic life. Each year between 25 and 30 Bucknell students study at the Université François Rabelais in Tours, France. Kingue recruits new host families and develops extra-curricular activities to help students integrate into the French system more fully.

In addition, she has written two novels, two books of short stories for adolescents and a children's book.

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